


morning will not come (for you are not here)

by Alitheia



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Hurt, M/M, Post-Naxzela, Surreal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-04
Updated: 2018-01-04
Packaged: 2019-02-26 09:11:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13232601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alitheia/pseuds/Alitheia
Summary: It’s one of those nightmares, one that Shiro remembers all too well.





	morning will not come (for you are not here)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hanamiiko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hanamiiko/gifts).



> had to spent the whole night at the airport (again) and got 12 hours to ruin my life. i chose to do it with sheith.
> 
> this one's for jii because you dragged me into this hell so take responsibility :'>

It’s one of those nightmares; one that Shiro knows always lunges at him with hungry claws, one that always plucks every little bit of oxygen out of his lungs, until his organs feel like wrung and air smothers him from every direction. It’s built upon a scene that Shiro never saw, but every time his mind plays the part of the dream where Keith crashes his ship— _with him on it_ —into that force field to save Voltron, his whole existence aches.

He tries telling himself that it’s enough, it’s damn enough and it’s time to get it over with. But each day pulling himself together gets harder and Shiro always wakes up feeling like a failure.

Today is the same—with a jerk and a sharp inhale, his eyes snap open. There’s a dull pain prodding the back of his neck and shoulders, as the Black Paladin realizes he had somehow fallen asleep on the bridge, still sitting at his console. He blinks a few times, not really remembering what he was doing there earlier, but it doesn’t matter once his eyes scan the room and find something that does.

Keith is near, with his back to Shiro and his eyes to the galaxy on the other side of the window, one shoulder leaning onto the glass. Laid on an expanse of black, his silhouette is almost a mere shadow, clad in the dark Marmora suit that hugs him tight. The world he’s staring out there may as well be filled with glittering stars and everything that sparkles, but to Shiro nothing else will ever beat Keith; breathtaking in anything he does, even in just a simple motion of turning his head around, eyeing Shiro with a pair of eyes that shine like purple marbles.

“Bad dream?” He smiles, almost ethereal.

“ _Keith_.” Sharp and stilted, but that name rolls off his tongue on autopilot. Shiro purses his lips and opens it once more, ready to shoot another barrage of questions he’s been asking but Keith hasn’t answered.

“Are we going back to that again?” Keith cuts him off before he can spit out a syllable, the lilt in voice manages to somehow make him sound amused. Both know well what the Black Paladin was about to broach, and the silence that follows isn’t the kind that Shiro likes. Keeping eye contact then is easy, stopping himself from drowning in that sea of mauve is not, but Shiro’s holding out, hoping this time he has enough share of the stubbornness that the other possesses.

Eventually, Keith is the first to relent, taking several steps closer to him so the shadows no longer cast upon his face and Shiro can see his visage clearly; there’s no scowl, instead, there exists the ghost of this cheeky smile that always makes Shiro want to kiss him. He’s uncharacteristically mild today, and Shiro wonders what the universe has done to his usual feistiness when the younger asks him softly, “Are you still upset?”

Upset? Shiro brings himself to his feet as he holds back a laugh, a hysterical one. _Upset_ , he says. Shiro set his eyes on Keith’s once again, this time strong enough to be a glare. The other has never been a coward, so he only stares back, unblinking. And Shiro tries to tell him that way, that he’s frustrated, he’s in agony, he grieves and he’s ruined; not a word in the dictionary they own or any other alien languages will quite describe the hollow feeling that the dream has drilled into his chest, so he lets the unsaid unravels in between the look they share. It’s Shiro’s most honest way of conveying emotions, and Keith never really needs words.

 _Is he still upset?_ Maybe, but it sounds too much like an understatement. The answer is so obvious that Shiro feels something akin to bubbling lava building up under his skin, boiling to a point where he knows it’s about to explode—but to whom? He’s doesn’t even know whom he’s been angry with; their enemies, Keith, the Blades and their other allies, _himself_?

In the end, though, the only thing that comes through gritted teeth is the thing he’s been asking over and over, “Why did you do it, Keith?”

“You know exactly why,” Keith replies without missing a beat, because he’s always fast at anything and nothing stops him, “I can’t afford to lose you.”

And Shiro knows, of course he fucking knows. Keith and his stupid loyalty, Keith and everything he will do to protect his friends, Keith and every damn thing he had done to keep _Shiro_ safe. This is a verity that has always been sitting at the back of his consciousness, for they need no words to understand each other, after all, but still he knows that he won’t stop asking— _why, Keith? Why, why,_ why _?_

“So then, you thought it’s fine,” the air feels thick when he inhales, then feels like sand crawling down his throat when he swallows—and it reminds him of the desert, in the morning he woke up to find Keith at his bedside after a year-long of nightmare—“it’s fine if I were the one to lose you instead?”

“Remember what they always said,” Keith chuckles, “I’m selfish.”

Shiro can never really agree, because Keith isn’t like that—no, not completely—and Shiro knows him more than anyone else could ever wish to. Or perhaps he’s wrong, and there had been indeed actions and choices of Keith that he wouldn’t have been able to predict. Perhaps Shiro had been too confident, and perhaps Keith had been a little more obstinate than anyone would’ve thought.

The universe had tried to separate them twice and twice as well Keith had come to save him; Shiro should’ve known better not to let it have the third try.

“I can’t stop thinking about it, Keith.”

“It’s all right, Shiro.”

“No,” he replied, “it’s never all right without you.”

Indeed it’s not, and Shiro remembers that the thought of returning and holding Keith again had been the only thing that kept him alive through all the time he spent in the gladiator pit, the thing that he’d been so desperately clinging on to; a sole hope that one day, morning would come with Keith and he’d be woken up from his nightmare.

( _But now morning will not come, will it?_ )

Staggering, he makes his way to the other Paladin— _ah_ , no longer a Paladin, but a member of the Blades, because that’s what he was the last time Shiro saw him, walking out of the door as someone who’s ready to sacrifice his life for the greater good. Perhaps at that time Shiro should’ve stopped him too, because Keith took the sun along with him.

Shiro’s hands reach out before he can think, feeling nothing as Keith’s slim waist slips into his arms like it always used to, so ridiculously perfect and fitting that he thinks even in other realities, the two of them must also be made for each other as well (only maybe with a happier ending).

Burying his nose in the crook of Keith’s neck, hoping to catch the scent he’d been all too familiar with, Shiro closes his eyes and whispers to himself, “I need to wake up.”

“Yeah,” Keith’s hand lands on the small of his back, his touch lighter than feathers and nearly nonexistent, “but it’s okay, you can rest a little more.”

 

 

( _The window never shows day, because black is now his universe in wake and sleep. Perhaps the color of his lion had been a premonition, that someday Shiro is to tread through everlasting night, because someday too, his morning stops coming._ )

 

 

When Shiro opens his eyes much later, back once more at his console, Keith is no longer there—he’s never been there, for he’d been shattered in pieces when his fighter kissed the particle barrier, blazing in a pretty space firework, beautiful even to the very end. It’s a scene that the Black Paladin never actually saw, but somehow always plays under his closed eyelids, again and again and again, as he waits for the morning that will never come.

It’s one of those nightmares; one that Shiro knows he will never wake up from.

**Author's Note:**

> i just, just still can't get over those last scenes from season 4 okay ;;;; also english isn't my first language and this is unbetaed so if you found any error feel free to tell me, thank you for reading!
> 
> now if you'll excuse me i'm going back to gross sob in the corner


End file.
